Congress would bring one GST slab, if voted to power: Gandhi

The Congress president accused Modi of doing nothing to bring back black money stashed abroad.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi said on Saturday if his party comes to power, it would impose one slab of Goods and Services Tax instead of five and abolish the 28 percent GST slab.

During an interaction with students at Maharani’s College here, Afreen, a student, asked the Congress chief why there was free health care in Singapore though they have one GST slab of seven percent, which India lacks despite having 28 percent GST.

Replying to her, Gandhi said Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be better positioned to answer.

He, however, told her that Congress favoured one GST as multiple slabs encourage corruption.

“If you do a five-layered GST, you will not have GST, you will have a Gabbar Singh Tax.What it means is there will be extortion and there will be a lot of mischief to decide which bracket what product should go,” Gandhi said.

The Congress president accused Modi of doing nothing to bring back black money stashed abroad.

He said the Centre was having the list of those who have accounts in Swiss Banks but it is reluctant to table in Parliament the list of black money hoarders.

The government’s focus should not be five percent of cash stashed abroad but the focus should be Swiss Bank, gold and real estate, the Congress president said.

Gandhi said transparency alone can check corruption and black money and the Congress government had taken certain steps like Right to Information.

He said defaulters like Nirav Modi and others were getting exposed because of transparency, empowering citizens, Panchayati Raj, Lokpal and decentralization of power.